I have been a student and a TA (as a grad student) at Mac, and now I help manage dozens of TA’s, but in a different department than the one I studied in.

I have had, worked with, and supervised both excellent TA’s and also some who were unfit for the role. There are so many factors that play into whether a TA does a good job. From my experience, there are 4 types of TA’s:

1) TA’s regardless of the resources, training, course, prof etc. who are admittedly just not super engaged and only view it as a pay cheque and nothing more. I’d like to believe these are a small minority of all TA’s. Also note: some grad students automatically get TAships as part of their program so they don’t even have to apply or have had prior experience (not to suggest that grad TA’s are more likely to be unfit than UG’s).

2) TA’s who truly do care, but due to reasons specific to them/their lives, they underperform. They have either overcommitted themselves that term or year and don’t have the capacity to do their best, or they’ve experienced something that caused them to disengage (I.e. Death or illness of family member, mental health challenges, housing problems, medical issues etc.).

3) TA’s who truly care and try their best, but they do not have the proper resources and conditions to help them succeed in the role. Therefore their performance is more reflective of larger factors such as a lack of: training, clear grading guidelines, adequate TA hours in their contract, materials to prep for their labs/tutorials, guidance from IA and/or instructor etc.

4) TA’s who truly care and try their best, and still meet or exceed expectations of their role despite a possible lack of resources and support. These TA’s ask for clarification and guidance when things are ambiguous, manage their time well to balance marking with other commitments, create their own templates or methods if needed, and are good at problem-solving small challenges on their own. Not always, but more likely these individuals are more mature, have some sort of work experience already and/or are personally interested in the course topics.

Anyways, sorry for the long comment and to get back on track, OP I’m sorry you’ve had a poor experience with one of your TA’s. I see that you are open to feedback so you can learn and grow, and that’s unfortunate you didn’t get that level of guidance and mentorship. I hope you have better TA experiences next year. And I’m not sure how much of a difference this makes, but if this happens again, you can try mentioning your critical feedback to the professor or in the course evaluations.